001but for everyone all right now even hello underneath for our purses said I wanted to wait [Laughter] and here's what's funny I sent the whole description sorry bad my bad oh um yeah yeah you can bring it up and then I'm gonna direct them to you agree you know what it's getting all right thank you to everybody for being here tonight to respect everybody's time we're gonna go ahead and get started the crane school district understands that our community of schools is located on the ancestral land of the Odom Jude and achimil Odom people who descended from the Hohokam and have inhabited these lands since the time immemorial the hodum whose names translates literally two people are a vibrant culture and communities spanning countless Generations into the past continuing to thrive in the present and
002carrying a powerful Legacy for Generations into the future with this acknowledgment the Creighton School District formerly recognizes that the traditional care and keeping of these lands by indigenous people is an aspirational model of community stewardship that we are committed to honor with practices policy and human relations um Miss mcshafri can you lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance please a nation under God indivisible Liberty thank you that brings us to our roll call we have Miss Gibson McLean here we have MS mcstuffrey and myself Ms McCaleb and Miss Ayers we want to welcome everyone to tonight's meeting and remind the audience of the request to address board cards that must be completed and submitted to the board secretary if they wish to speak to an agenda item board policy provides for two cards White cards
003to be submitted in order to speak to an agenda item and blue cards to be submitted in order to speak during public comments due to the open meeting law board members are not allowed to address items that are not on the agenda and before we go into approval of consent I know that we all are aware of this recent school shooting and also just yesterday or this morning an ice Detention Center lost 32 immigrants in a fire so I would like to take a moment of silence just for a few minutes I appreciate everybody who joined in that moment of silence for us that brings us to approval of agenda I move the governing board approve the agenda as presented all those in favor I never brings us to public comments Hilda do we have
004any public comments today okay and just a quick question um have we worked on Virtual comments I know that in the last board update we talked okay so just so everybody knows whoever is watching us also on online you guys are able to submit virtual comments now so um that way everybody's aware thank you guys for working so hard on that and that brings us to our superintendent report good evening governing boards Community hello staff it is testing season beginning with our fifth and 8th graders in science and Monday third through eighth graders with the aasa test so I know our students are getting to bed early and eating a good breakfast and staying focused we really appreciate their their concentration and energy in that area our kindergarten fair is from four to six tomorrow
005night Our Family Resource Center so we hope we'll rally all of our future kindergartners to join us there and learn a little bit more about our schools we also have our art expo tomorrow night from 5 to 6 30 at Monte Vista thank you Monte Vista for hosting also tonight's artwork is from Monte Vista if you care to go over to the display and see it we will have over 400 pieces of art at the art expo um now I know our folks who are on the conflict uh have a conflict with the health wellness and Safety Committee at that time so we'll see what we can do to mitigate a chance for them to go if they so choose um we also want to thank them for the creative Outreach at our NAU job
006fair our lead recruiter Jeff Geier and uh and Yvonne Carvajal created these ten thousand dollar um bucks to hand out as an incentive to encourage people to come and everybody else at the recruitment fair was furious with us so we're very proud of that and I thought that was pretty creative um and uh I just wanted to share that I want to thank the governing board for the opportunity to represent the United States and Creighton School District as a diplomat and Ambassador in Israel it was an emotional and moving and life-changing experience the way that the Israelis embrace all children from infancy to adulthood is the true definition of the solidarity of a village uh Palestinian Jews Christians the Arab people all are welcome and they have an amazing sense of Harmony despite some of
007the headlines that we read and while there appears to be upset with Netanyahu and his efforts to modify the judicial system over there I felt nothing but safe and secure and there is a possibility for our children to have an opportunity to go over there and I would absolutely support that if that's something we can make happen um I I could go on and on about that trip relative to the schools visited the alternative circumstances that they provide for children who needed different you know psychological music therapy art therapy outdoor environmental learning environment situations uh they have a a hospital service for students who come from Ethiopia with their parents where they can have residential support while following up on heart surgery the social services there are Beyond reproach and I have never seen a
008more child-centered Community as I have across the entire country and it was beautifully geographically it was beautiful spiritually it was beautiful in its democracy and efforts to bring Harmony among the many different viewpoints and beliefs in that country so I just take my hats off to the board for allowing me to do that and thank you very much and that also tells me right now it's about 3 A.M for my body so I'll I promise to stay focused and alert tonight uh but I'm adjusting having just returned and I'll conclude by wishing those who celebrate in the next week or two happy Ramadan Happy Passover and happy Easter thank you um Miss Ayers would you like to start us off with our governing board reports thank you um the only thing I really have to
009say is during the last two weeks why people were on spring break you did have aeaj at the Capitol and since I am a member I did a 10 and so did Kelly Riel um so it was nice to be with them down at the Capitol there was a lot of people down there for spring break and um we got to meet a lot of legislature uh legislators and um hear from them and their priorities um unfortunately we didn't get to meet the governor because she was out of town but her twin was there which I know Becky her twin so she kept getting confused computer where's her sister um so and there's more I'm going to share during the legislative report so I'll save that for later so thank you thank you Miss McCaleb
010um not much just uh thinking of everyone as you enter testing season and thank you teachers for all the hard work I know you're doing to prepare the students and create a culture and environment where it's not just a testing but trying to pump them up and and get them ready so thank you all for that and just continuing to think about those in Nashville and in that community and is really wanting everyone to think about how we can actually make a change um because it's just absolutely heartbreaking and just ridiculous that this continues to occur so thank you Miss mcsheffery yeah um budget and expense reports for the district's Federal pandemic relief funding grants s or one two and three um I just wanted to share publicly that these reports are not really in
011any context they're not self-explanatory this is not a transparent way how to explain how we have spent this money it is a list of numbers without meaningful explanations next to them similar to what we got um when we voted on the stipend which also was not self-explanatory um at all for example one line item says one hundred thousand dollars was spent on non-student books what is that there are many line items having to do with Personnel but no position title associated with it again not at all self-explanatory and not at all transparent I hope that we will have a much more thorough um presentation and discussion as we have requested um about a month ago now um and if not I mean then I feel like that's another area that is in great need of
012audit if this is all that we're going to be given as a board thank you thank you let's give some McLean foremost um just in case there are people in our community who may be impacted I wouldn't necessarily normally address this but as an individual I believe that there are human rights atrocities that get committed in Palestine every day and so I just want to make sure that if there's people in our community that feel um maybe alienated by things that that they understand that individuals may believe differently um additionally I have a couple of recommend or requests I guess for information moving forward um first I would I would hope to get some information about when we stopped using reusable cafeteria trays and why we use styrofoam trays for every meal curious about the
013amount of waste that cause causes and also what the decision was to get rid of reusable trays and and why we can't go back to those it seems like an unsustainable practice additionally I'm curious about um Federal I guess any kind of federal rules that would prevent us from donating or at least holding on to non-perishable food items when meals are completed it's concerning to me that many of it from what I've heard it sounds like maybe a lot of food is getting thrown away on a daily basis that's very concerning to me considering so many of the needs that we have in our community if there's anything federally that gets in the way I understand there's a lot of rules with money but I would be I'm just curious what's there and what's going
014on and how do we make it work how do we work around things um I also have a request to see if the board could get in a copy of an inventory of what's stored in our warehouse it sounds like maybe from meetings I've had with people that it sounds like maybe the people are unaware of everything that's in there and I'm just curious if we have an audit or inventory list of that and if we keep good track of that um I'd also like to know the number of contracted employees with the district both classified and certified at this time our guests for the next what we anticipate for the next school year and by contract it I mean obviously folks who are hired through a third party and I'm guessing then we don't
015pay their insurance or their asrs but or maybe one of the two but I'm just curious how many of our employees both certified and classified are contracted rather than actual District employees last request before I move into something but it's related is it's my understanding the mac and PA system hasn't been working since December that's a safety concern for me if the PA system doesn't work I'm assuming there's a feature on wired phones that should be able to work either way teachers shouldn't be unaware of how any of that why any of that's not working and it's already going to be April so that should be taken care of and I would like an update on that at the next board meeting um finally moving into safety and kind of going off of what other
016folks have talked about um you know I've spent the last seven months on the Safety Committee at Phoenix Union I'm the chair of the committee it's the committee of started out with 21 community members we're down to 15. tomorrow's our final meeting we're spending six hours making decisions about what our recommendations are going to be for the Phoenix Union board many of those things are translatable and important to this District as well and so three requests that I have are some of these things I understand may only be able to share with us in executive session and so whatever those may be anything that is allowed to be shared with the public rather than executive session I would prefer that for transparency's sake I would like to know if we have a crisis response plan
017if so what does that look like I would like to know if we use threat assessments if we do what is the threat assessment protocol look like and then I also would like to know if we have safety teams if so who's on them and what are the procedures that are followed for those um those are just questions I have um and I'm curious you know about those things so that we can kind of get a better look I think that with what we anticipate as I've heard from the president in the past looking at evaluating our discipline and student codes of Conduct in conjunction with these things that I've requested it's kind of like a holistic plan that those two items and then also our SEL which we're focused on I think all three
018of those things together are really what makes safety a comprehensive package and so I'm hoping that we can I I would love a bird's eye view of things rather than kind of just the I actually don't know I feel like I'm just kind of unaware of what goes on and I've spoken with some teachers and I haven't heard much about the existence of any of these things so I'm just curious so hopefully we can get some more insight on that um I think that's all that I have I know is a lot but if you need me to repeat anything or let y'all know after the please let me know thank you thank you so much um for me um just a quick update one of them is that I know that a lot of
019our spring Sports have started so yay congratulations to all the kids I know TCA has gotten their first round of sports and cheerleading so it's been super exciting for that school for the kids to be active in doing those type of things and thank you for the teachers I know that there's a lot of the teachers that are coaching and they stay all day in school and then they go three hours still after school just to make sure these kids have a space to play sports so um I'm really thankful for that um last week and I'm only bringing this up because it does affect our crane Community city council had an opportunity to protect some of the children that I serve and not evicting them of their mobile homes and that did not go
020the way that a lot of us were expecting so some of our kids will be unsheltered by May 28th which is the last day of school I'm really appreciative for the district to not only joining in a letter and letting know City Council so that we wanted them to act upon something can protect these families but that one of our administrators stood at the whole meeting for six hours as kids were playing for their homes so I do believe in an intersectionality and I do believe that our kids are our number one priority so when we have stuff at a district label and administrators showing up and in solidarity with his families not only does it mean a lot you know I think to the district but it says a lot to those families so
021they were really appreciative and thankful for you know what we tried to do so I am I'm thankful for the district to joining on that plan and helping protect our families I know that the Family Resources centers on top of it already and we're going to try to um get in there and help mitigate any you know setting crisis as much as we can um Saturday we had a fun field day on my birthday Eve going through superintendent um applications we were there for almost six seven hours and we were able to come up with six candidates of maybe potential people of our superint who will be your next superintendent so that was awesome that we were able to get um six candidates out of all the overwhelming applications one thing that they did let
022us know is that they've never seen a district with so many applicants so I feel like that's that's a good precedent for our district that even though we have a lot of issues in the community this district is known as getting stuff done and people wanting to be part of this District so that was really heartwarming to see in here I know that the names have been public already so you guys can do your own research and April 27th at excelencia you can come with all the questions you have um because eventually will we end up choosing some finalists out of that um so that's April 27th um at excelencia um one request I do have and I just found out recently at the district level that we do recognize some of the hours that
023our parents are putting in however I've just come to realize that our PTO parents and the hours that they do with the PTO do not include those hours and I'm trying to figure out is that a policy that's set in place who sets that because a lot of our PTO parents are feeling underappreciated at the moment um our school's activities the fundraising all that kind of stuff it really boils down to those parent-teacher organizations and the parents putting in the time so I would like us to get some direction on why those hours are not counted um from what I understand it's because it's a non-profit but everything is getting done for the school so if there's not a certain policy that's holding us I would hope that we can change that to really give
024the recognition the credit to these parents that spend hours in the classrooms making sure that they're their support for these teachers and that brings the conclusion of my board report um and then if you guys have questions on that just let me know and I can we can figure it out but I would like to know what's going on with that um so that brings us to consent agenda I move the governing board approved consent agenda items a through J in accordance with policy bedb Dash e I'd like to pull item J any anybody else want to pull something okay I move the governing board approved consent agenda items a through I in accordance with policy b e d b Dash e second all those in favor aye aye aye um so the reason why
025are we Andre sorry yes go ahead Jay discussion so the reason why I pulled Jay and it's not that I have like anything against this I would just like more explanation anytime we're upping a previous amount that's been approved especially by what appears to and if I'm understanding this correctly looks like we're upping it by 150 percent I'm curious just for more explanation on what this why and what the anticipations are I see that there's some in there's a little bit of a and as needed if needed basis maybe you could just give a little overview of the background of this thank you Jay Madam president members of the board um member Gibson McLean the um this actually just to have perfect clarity it's not an increase of 1.5 million it's an increase from the
026current amount which is one million two one point five million okay so so it's a fifty percent it's a fifty percent increase and so um this was prior to you joining the board but each June typically this is one of those types of items that we bring to the board um for approval and last summer there were some language changes and there was a recommendation you know given the changes in the cost of things to perhaps go to two million dollars at that time the board asked me could we just stay at 1 million and if our expenses run higher bring it back and and my response was absolutely the only you know warning that I gave is we couldn't in a pinch where we needed to see meeting to get something done wasn't a
027huge concern and so we moved forward and the board approved it at the one million dollar level since that time you've seen uh our good friend Mr Scott Wells here many many times and even more tonight and even more tonight so again one of the things you'll notice in some of those ones that have already been approved moments ago that very often there's District match and those District matches we can't go out and procure separately because we're tied to the sfbs procurement so to keep the procurement clean we typically do it through this jock not everything that's done here is related to that so I just want to be clear about that I'm not saying everything in here is that but the Lion's Share of what's come through this fund has been those types of
028things there is one fairly large ticket item that's coming up that wouldn't be related to that it's related actually to the electrical um I'll call it challenges that we've had at the Kennedy campus and being able to provide continued electrical support not only for our little big Minds partner there but also the addition of the replacement Head Start building to replace the one that had been on the campus and I'm very proud to say that head start's been a great partner and they're helping cover a portion of the court cost as well but our portion would go through this process as well so maybe a little more detail than you up I just want to make sure no it's fine I guess my concerns stem from knowing kind of the small community I didn't know
029the background of all of these items and I know that there's a small pool of contractors that seem to hang out in the education area and it's my understanding from being a nerd and reading people's minutes and agendas in different districts that a lot of times contracts are given based on low bids and then there's a ton of increases that are voted on later and I just wanted to make sure this wasn't one of those instances where one of these things was that because I'm not down yeah this isn't an increase to any item that was presented increase in the threshold of the amount we can spend through that mechanism um and um I did a quick glance with Mr Martinez who's our procurement person and just verified that not all of these have gone
030to one firm there's at least four firms that a lot of these jobs have been pushed out to and so I just wanted to make sure there wasn't any irregularities like every single one of these went to you know one individual firm or you know fifty percent of the money went one place or so thank you Mr Man any further discussion okay hearing none I move the governing board approved consent agenda item J in accordance with policy bedb-e second well they'll send favor I thank you and that brings us to our lovely Biltmore Prep Academy update on the a plus School of Excellence recognition good evening Madam president members of the governing board this evening in addition to the prep the presentation from Biltmore Preparatory Academy our students staff and teachers we will be celebrating
031the A Plus Award that Biltmore prep received from the Arizona Education Foundation just a little bit of quick background this very prestigious award was established by the Arizona Educational Foundation in 1983 as a way to identify celebrate and recognize educational excellence in Arizona's Public Schools this is the highest state level award given to a public school and we're very very proud of our Biltmore Preparatory Academy Tigers welcome let's give him a round of applause we'll bring the award up we'll do photos at the end after the presentation after the students have given us the wonderful uh information and I'll explain the a plus process in some detail throughout the positions the proud dad cameras that's okay come on come on back you can go anywhere you want good evening Madam president governing board members and
032executive team my name is Sophia velasigi and I am an 8th grade student at Wilmore Preparatory Academy I've been in the dla program for nine years my name is GM amini and I'm also an 8th grade student at bookmark prep I'm in the DLI program my name is Isaac Hernandez and I'm also an 8th grade student at Biltmore prep I am also in the DLI program we are happy to be here this evening to provide an update on our exciting year of serving as boot more prep leaders and our Biltmore prep journey to become an A plus School of Excellence we would like to begin by also recognizing our site leadership team Dr Jamar our principal Miss Suave our assistant principal Dr Grant our instructional coach Mrs riscoe our school psychologist and Miss Porter child
033advocate and the other Biltmore prep teachers joining us in the audience this evening our agenda for this evening's presentation is to First share some background information on the A-Plus School of Excellence program and Biltmore prep's journey to become recognized as an A-Plus School of Excellence we will then take a deeper dive into some of the aspects of our School's application and will wrap up with the video giving each of you a closer look into our school culture where you will hear from students and teachers as well as see some of the exciting things happening on our A-Plus campus we want to begin briefly by re-sharing a little about the a plus School of Excellence program by the Arizona Educational Foundation program serves as a way to identify celebrate and recognize educational excellence in public schools
034throughout Arizona while there while there are no monetary benefits for being recognized as an A-Plus School of Excellence there are benefits as our team dove into the application began collecting evidence we were able to celebrate the many pieces we have in place to support students think successful at builtmore prep as well as areas for continued growth and Improvement additionally being an A plus School of Excellence gives us bragging rates as we know we go above and beyond the everyday practices that all schools in are expected to implement as well as ensuring we have a strong commitment to academic Excellence cultivate our learning is centered safe School environment address students socials emotional physical and intellectual needs and serve as a model for equality and equity biltmore's journey to a plus actually began several years ago as
035the team made the decision to apply and began Gathering evidence the covered pandemic put a halt on the process however the team continued working through the application process beginning last school year working to ensure an understanding of the application the rubric and Gathering evidence for the different sections of the application our teachers understood the importance of this process being an entire Community process and not those of a few individuals and so while our primary writer of the application was Miss tashman with our team leaders serving as the contributing authors our entire Community was involved in gathering information and providing input our application was due on August 31st and when submitted was 30 pages you have a link to our application if you would like to read all about the amazing things happening at Biltmore every
036day at the end of September Dr Demar was notified by our lead a plus judge that our site had received a site visit and we were overjoyed and knew that there was work to be done to be ready for the team of five judges that were scheduled to visit Wilmore for two days at the end of February the two-day site visit consisted of the team of Judges observing every area of Campus including each classroom we assessed lunch arrival on dismissal at the start of day one we gave the judges a tour highlighting our learning spaces day one wrapped up with a certified teacher meeting where the team of Judges asked her if you choose a bunch of questions about our school day two also included some additional observations as well as the parent community meeting
037a classified staff meeting a student meeting and then wrapped up with the judge's meeting with Dr Mara and Miss Robert at the end of the visit we had to wait until and wait until notifications were made and the public announcement that built prep was indeed being recognized as an A-Plus School of Excellence we now want to share a little more about our application so you have a better understanding of our school and how we support student academic achievement in language proficiency section one was all about strong instructional leadership and we are proud to be living our school Vision where we work to ensure leaders across campus there are so many opportunities for students to become leaders on our campus whether serving as student ambassadors to give guest tours morning announcements leading the assemblies serving as
038junior coaches being leaders reader leaders for Spanish mentors teacher leaders are a key to so many initiatives across campus serving as team leads facilitating professional development and providing mentoring to others I encourage you to read more in our application about strong instructional leadership at Biltmore prep Tiger Tiger Pride is what we display every day and our culture is something that makes our school unique and special section 2 of our application is school organization and culture there is so much in this section of the application that we don't have time to share with you tonight however know that our school Community strives to create an environment where all students and families are welcomed embraced and loved our Ben spells kind campus initiative has provided opportunities to learn about kindness the science behind kindness and ways we
039can show ourselves and each other kindness just this week our con campus focus is on practicing gratitude and how showing gratitude improves improves overall life contentment helps kids feel connected Fosters a positive outlook and even helps to lessen anxiety we are encouraged to Express gratitude through learning to write thank you notes we invite you to come to campus to experience our special culture or to even attend one of our student recognition assemblies to see our Tiger Pride in action guaranteed viable curriculum and meaningful assessment is Section 3 of our application and this application is where we highlight important aspects of our Spanish Immersion program including assessment and opportunities for our students to earn high school credit for Spanish proficiency and but in the biliteracy award of Distinction just yesterday we received our Apple scores and
040we are happy to announce that the three of us along with many others scored high enough for Spanish one two 3-4 for high school credit congratulations in this section we also talk about how our teachers use data to monitor student projects back to teaching and support section of our A-Plus application painted picture for the reader on what happens across campus and in the classrooms during the school day the first paragraph of the section reads blocking degrees waves the voices of excited Learners can be heard throughout Biltmore prep each day begins with teachers and staff greeting students as they are dropped off by car or walk onto campus once past the gate students run to their friends and engage in chatting and playing on the playground as the bell rings teachers can be seen leading students
041to classroom doors including them by name and continuing to read this section you will learn more about the common language across our campus the instructional practices teachers use to ensure students learn how technology supports learning and how Biltmore prep has also been recognized as an apple distinguished School last section of our application caregiver and community supports Paints the picture of how our entire Community comes together to support our students our PTO Works tirelessly to ensure all families have an opportunity to be engaged within our community Through activities and events such as the dodgeball tournament just on last Friday the fall kindness Carnival the sweetheart dance and the k-550 soccer league I personally enjoy the kindness Festival the most what about you too I would have to agree I love the junk team I actually like
042the sweetheart dance because all of the food and my friends were there additionally there are many committees where parents and families can volunteer their time to support our school Community recently our garden committee collaborated and planted six fruit trees blackberries raspberries mulberries and grapevines and the garden committee and volunteers just had a garden work day this past Saturday we can continue to tell you about our A-Plus school and we thought it would be great for you to hear from some of our students and teachers as you get a glimpse into the great things happening at Biltmore through pictures and videos I mean sort of it's Arcadia light um foreign [Music] if you were to pull up a dictionary and look up the word community you would literally see a picture of Biltmore Prep Academy right
043next to it Biltmore prep has an amazing sense of community given all the love that the teachers and the parents give to the students we are truly student driven everything we do is for the students there is always opportunities and enrichment programs what makes BPA an A plus school is classes for being safe respectful and responsible and it was really fun and we always try our best like um for me the state test is coming up and my teachers are supporting us foreign Yama octavos sure um I have never felt more love and support from my students the leadership team my co-workers the parents that are involved at the school it truly is such a welcoming Community to be a part of I enjoy waking up every single day to come to work watching my
044students grow is such a privilege I get to work with students whether that's co-teaching social and emotional learning lessons with teachers or hosting Lunch Bunch with our school psychologist and I just absolutely love all of the students at our school and our entire community and I just see how invested everyone is oh foreign in every PA because if you learn Spanish and you like go to somewhere that they speak Spanish you know what they are saying one of my favorite Spanish words is adios um okay as we wrap up we want to share a quote with you about our school from our A Plus application boot more students are immersed in experiences that have grown into traditions in the community from learning about and celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month to setting up for Dia de los
045Muertos to participating in an exchange program built Biltmore Prep students are encouraged to learn about and embrace the cultures of other countries in order to enrich their own lives and grow into by literate leaders thank you so much for the opportunity to share and celebrate our school Biltmore prep as an A plus School of Excellence we are here to answer any question if you have them thank you thank you so guys so much for that presentation that was awesome I do have one question from each of you though what is your favorite thing about being a leader of your school I know all three of you have different leadership roles and I know they play an important part but it could be a one answer to answer nothing too serious I'm just wondering that I
046like about being a leader is one you have everyone looking up to you and a lot of them will come up to you and be like I know you and then you don't know them but they're all looking up to you and it's so nice because I remember I had Role Models when I was like in Elementary in elementary school and I looked up to them and now I am one of the leaders at Biltmore prep yeah you're setting a great example that's awesome I would have to agree with Sophia one of the great things of being a leader is having all the little kids look up to you it's really great responsibility and I have everyone trusting me so I can do my own work so that's great yeah I'd have to agree with
047both of them and I just like going and helping them during out during recess with Junior coaching and playing with them yeah awesome I appreciate all three of you and thank you so much to Biltmore prep for obviously cultivating you know these amazing leaders so thank you guys so much and I'm so proud to have the a plus oh no I'm sorry we have other board members I'm just excited my son is up here and this is like amazing I know you're a proud mom but I am a tiger so uh anyway um my question to you all is what do you think is one life skill that you that was cultivated for you at Biltmore prep that you're going to take with you when you go to high school companionship taking like an opera
048taking an opportunity when it comes to you yeah leadership it's a great role I wanna the presentation was so amazing and um it's been 22 years since I had my promotion um and the school was a lot different back then but it's so great to see some of the same traditions and also familiar faces and I think seeing the back of Miss Frank's head or seeing miss Sabah here it like remind and they aren't my T they weren't my teachers but I know who they are um it's I think it's so important to have teachers and staff who've been in in the school and in the district for that long I think that just is so invaluable to the community and to other teachers and staff it's fantastic to see that um just everything that's
049offered there's so many things that are still there which is so great and to see also we used to call it tiger News Network um and I was the host in 1999. um uh and fun fact my theme song was The Dope Show by Marilyn Manson accompanied with this voice so I'm sure it was fantastic um but um so anyway it's great to see all that and I just I'm sure that and you guys would probably agree like you already said that the teachers and staff and the parents are just amazing it looks like and at the same time I really hope that um we can get other schools in our district to the same position and and have people feeling like they're all on equal Playing Fields so and that's coming from me who
050wasn't an original tiger I'm also a Blue Devil so um yeah thank you um other board members any comments questions for lovely guests no questions but just really enjoy the presentation I know it takes courage to get up and stand present to a bunch of adults or adults that get nervous doing it so you three did an amazing amazing job and you should be very proud of yourselves thank you any other comments um thanks for being great role models for your school great job today um and congratulations on the a plus thank you awesome thank you guys so much don't sit down yet because at this time we'd like to invite our team from Biltmore prep up to take a photograph with the board and with the award from the Arizona Education Foundation it's a
051big banner we're gonna have to squish okay thank you guys so much thank you guys so much and that brings us to 10A this would be the discussion and prioritization and propos of proposed audits on the following topics the Creighton Academy construction project forensic curriculum management and special education Ms mcshapri I will open it up to you since this is your agenda item first thank you thank you have been on future agenda items for time we have heard you know a couple presentations about these which really was not what I had asked for um I don't know if we have the future agenda item uh okay the list you can see just what I wrote out requesting them so um so oh no I Hilda's got the hard times those are just what I requested
052so you all can just see what I requested and and what we've received um I'd like to prioritize them um and I think we need to get started on doing these thank you um as soon as possible for me the special education audit um is really takes a priority because I feel like our kids need this right now um and then secondarily the Creighton Academy um audit is important because we're going to be building lck um I'll start with um the special ed audit um I'm hearing we have a culture of pushing out students and staff in the department students not being serviced the services they're entitled to students not being evaluated allegations recently of cheating on standardized testing by providing accommodations that are not in sync with state law and this is not being
053made transparent to the board not following evidence-based practices medical billing prioritization and question just to name a few things that are of great concern to me we are the governing board these are our responsibilities um Creighton Academy audit we know we went over budget and we had to find money from many other resources during that time adjacent ways is an example the playground is another example that we know of um I want to know what overages we that occurred that we incurred and what change items we um incurred um we have lck coming up it's my understanding there's I mean there's a rumor that um that project is already over budget and we haven't even started building yet and so we're looking to Esther funds to pull money out of Esther funds to um basically
054help um it would provide more money to to the construction company they would be over budget already so I want to make sure we are not in the same situation and that it's we have more transparency on a massive construction project that is 22 million dollars that you know our community trusts us to do correctly um so I am not 100 sure what the next steps are but I believe that Miss Korea doll and myself should work with procurement procurement and purchasing to determine the next steps to determine what vendors um and what questions um they would have for us as a board so I would like to know if if we are in sync on that if if from a prioritization standpoint if there are other opinions on the board or if you feel
055like or if you have questions for me um I'm going to open it up to questions or discussion Ms Gibson McLean do you have any questions comments or anything about these um items um so I'll just go through them in this order I guess um so as far as the audit of the Creighton Academy construction project I think it's a good idea I think that to be transparent and think looking back to what we did there to see what we can learn from moving forward um additionally I agree with the comment you made about the community and trusting us you know I went to school here at a time when we never got bonds or overrides passed and so I would hate to lose the community's trust in the future by by by foregoing transparency
056and if it's not going to be a huge burden I don't see why this would be something that we couldn't do and and we learn from it at the same time um as far as the curriculum audit I and I don't have any I think obviously audits from time to time we've heard before that people seem to be in at least I feel like there's some consensus there I don't know um this out again salary schedule I kind of agree with a statement made earlier I think basically when we're you know as far as I know none of us are Financial professionals on this board unless people are hiding things um but like when we got all that information honestly for me you know I went to law school and so I am not a
057math person um and so I need things to be a little more consumable I do appreciate the transparency in giving us the raw information but also it'd be helpful for some more consumable information maybe something to go along with it or even like a coding system it didn't even seem like there was like a coding system that could I could pick up on to see like okay all of these things are related all it was just very confusing and a lot to take in at once so maybe I think moving forward if we have a better idea and I think that goes into this request for the I don't know you can tell me if I'm wrong I feel like it's one of the factors at play yes um and so I I would agree
058with that as far as um special ed situation um I guess I maybe what I'm hearing I wouldn't necessarily call it an audit to me what I'm hearing it sounds like it would need to be called like an investigation I don't know that audit's the right word maybe because because it's a term that's already used within the industry for specific things and so it sounds like the things that you listed off are not things that would be necessarily addressed by traditional special ed audits or clearly aren't addressed by whatever Ade does and it sounds more like to me it sounds like an investigation where interviews would be conducted and information would be gathered and then that would be reported back so um given um given information that has been shared and I know we get
059into murky territory but again um I've spoken to people who've left this District um after they've left not before who've been willing to talk to me I you know have spoke I speak to teachers and staff on the side you know outside of board meetings and so I would say that I share a level of concern that would rise to the level that I would be in agreement to do some sort of Investigation just to see what's going on or if anything's going on in terms of the consistent um issues I guess or or things that seem to come up in a lot of the conversations that I have with different folks so and just to clarify I think I've been using the word audit just to make it a little more um uh not
060as scary I think the word investigation is scary to people and all I am looking for here is transparency and trying to get the to the Crux of what's Happening um we did an audit when Dr Lewis came on I mean these things need to happen from time to time when we're hearing grave concerns and we don't know what's happening um so call it an audit investigation I think I think you're right I mean I think it is probably more of an investigation since we keep comparing the audit to what Ade already does and that's not what I'm looking at doing is is another Ade type of audit um Miss Ayers do you have any comments or questions I think there's a big difference between audit and an investigation especially in the way of money
061so that probably needs to be clarified is that an audit is an investigation if it is an audit I think we need to know what the audit is going to do because many times it seems that um that it's unclear what you're asking for versus what's actually given and so I'm not sure where the breakdown in communication is with that um I just need more information before I want to know how much like things cost like how much is it not only going to cost but I also wonder if this would best be um something that we take our time with and that we wait for maybe our new superintendent um to take over and decide which audits or which problems he foresees that maybe he or she um you know things that we might
062need at this time so I'm just worried that we're rushing in um especially for I know there's people that um you know have some concerns but does it does it warrant an audit or you know a huge amount of money for maybe a couple things I really do think an investigation maybe on a couple things would be better than an actual audit but so that's my take thank you that's my Caleb um some of my comments have already been addressed um I do caution on like the term audit audits are very specific um whether they're done by Ade or done by private companies um they they give a very specific set of information so um I think with regards to the special education um it would be more of an investigation um with regards to
063uh budget pieces with the Creighton Academy and salary I think you know it's not necessarily an internal audit I feel that it's let's make sure we have all of that information um and maybe it needs to be presented in a different way so kind of the your comments of like we working together working with Jay or whoever else on being able to iterate what do we want how do we want to see the information because we have a lot of this information and I'm absolutely not against transparency I think we do need to be transparent um I just the word audit if it's coming from an independent company is going to be a lot of money um which I don't think is us being good stewards um if it's something that we already have that
064information with us um the other thing that I just want us to be aware of as we look at any of these pieces regardless of what you call it is being mindful of the amount of time that it takes staff to put this stuff together so um like I said just making sure we're very clear on what information do we want to see and how do we want to be able to ingest it so that we don't have staff members spending a lot of time um and we still don't have the information we want um I'm currently in my district dealing with audit stuff and it is it's a lot of time for stuff that we know the state already has the information they just wanted it again in a different way and so I
065wasted four hours yesterday regurgitating information that was already shared and that's really stressful um and I we just need to be mindful of our staff um the other piece is um I think some of this stuff and in general other things are going to be things that are going the staff will be putting together knowing that we're onboarding a new superintendent so maybe if there's ways that knowing you know when a new superintendent is onboarded and them getting to know the district maybe that can kind of be like together somehow so that it's not like hey Steph you have to do this and you're also going to be preparing things for a new superintendent so I'm I don't know I'm thinking about conversations where we can work smarter and not harder and knowing that you
066know a new person coming in is going to want to know this information as well so how do we kind of kill two birds with one stone all right who are you backing off of that one thing that I understand from our process with asba is that there's going to be support after hiring yeah they might be able to guide you in that way yeah and be able to have some conversations about like what we want to see in terms of onboarding but the other thing that I'll add is you know um I mean it's almost April the hiring is going to happen at the end of next month like I know they don't start but by the time we get to a point where we're like looking at how much something would cost I
067mean the person's going to be here so I just want to keep that in mind like we're not voting on anything today we're having a discussion about prioritization is what I'm understanding and so it feels like this is going and given how long that maybe some other things have been brought up it doesn't feel like fast to me I I hear that and I want to address all the concerns you brought up uh both brought up and so um I'm interested in having further conversations hearing more information about what costs look would look like what who we would be talking to getting Clarity on what we would be asking for like actual deliverables on these things that sort of stuff sorry go ahead no it's okay uh Miss Caleb Miss Caleb were you done yeah
068yeah okay so I guess these are some of the questions that I have for each um item first and then those can be given in an aborta update and then that way we can further discuss but when it comes to the internal audit of Korean the first question is is have we ever had an internal audit like this before and if so when was the last audit we've had kind of like the audit that she's requesting it except for the Creighton Academy yeah oh okay or beforehand like if we did I don't believe we ever I mean I don't have to be answered I'll just ask these questions and then you can let us go back so I want to know if we ever have if we did what school was it and because I
069know that Monte Vista has been at some point remodeled so BPA in Ohio so if we have had a curriculum on it how much was it who did it and when it was done um the other question that I have and it doesn't have to be answered now which I already think I already know the answer to Is is that let's say we do um choose a certain amount for a contract if that much that money goes over we as a board have to approve that exceeded amount right so I would always go if we tell uh somebody it's ten dollars and they want to charge us 50 that 40 would come up to us right as a vote maximum price type project like this construction that would be true if we're talking about we
070bought notepads and the paper would be my best example you know sometimes we do a paper order and then they come back and go before we shipped it the cost was 50 cents higher on something like that typically it wouldn't come back because the dollar amounts are very small but on a project like construction if the gfp is exceeded then it does have to come back to the board so if we approved a contract for a million dollars and all of a sudden they're saying well now we have to add on some Roofing and it's going to cost another eight hundred thousand dollars would that 800 extra thousand dollars come back to the board as a vote yeah that would definitely come back okay typically the the common rule of thumb is if there's a
071variance of ten percent or more or if it pushes you over some form of procurement threshold so like the best example I can give of that is there's that hundred thousand dollar board approval individual item so if something was 92 000 and it went up 8 000 even though it didn't go up ten percent it would still come back to the board because now we've exceeded that hundred thousand dollar correction okay so with that being said um also in the information that we get back and I'm not saying I need it at the next board meeting but this is stuff regarding this specific um item that I think would help us as a board make a better decision is if did that did that specific scenario happen in the Creighton Academy where we the board
072approved you know more money and if we did I would like to know how much that was approved for and for what things they were approved for um I'm guessing what could be included in there or two or are the contractors that were associated with them oh yes and who who had the contract for the Creighton Academy as well um but yeah those are the questions that I would like for us to start off with the specific crane Academy audit let's make a comment too yes go ahead um and the reason that I brought this up initially is because Scottsdale did one for the like I think it was Kiba was their example but um the idea is that the cost savings that you find from an audit pays for the audit itself and we
073definitely had overages which I voted no for I was out voted on those like I said the the ways and means I'm sorry the adjacent ways and the playground I don't know of ones like if there were that's why I would like to see were there 80 000 here 80 000 here 80 000 here I would never really know about those things so um just a little more information yeah and I think that's why it's important for us to have specifically in the crane Academy if those situations did happen I think as a board we would like to see what over exceeded what they voted on him for what just to give us a better distinction of what's going to be happening with um lck too um moving on from the Creighton Academy audit any
074other questions or remarks I would just like to thank you for the clarity of the deliverables and the notion of where there might be some uh need for understanding relative to adjacent ways overages and change order items those three things feel very tangible to staff and I think could be easily not easily but with effort gathered and brought to the board if that's sufficient and I think the frustration over the the ambiguity of an audit is in those clarifications so if those three things are sufficient that would be something we could do to provide I just didn't know quite what to do with it from an external perspective it's not sufficient for me yet yeah I I Scottsdale did it as and internal audit which again I will explain an internal audit happens in large
075companies who can afford an internal audit Department that department reports directly to the board so for us to do an internal audit that reports directly to the board we would have to hire an outside company if that makes sense to everyone so I'm looking for that outside company transparency again the cost most likely will pay for itself if not over in the cost savings that we find in a huge construction project like this so I'm it's not satisfactory to me those three pieces there's more okay yeah and I think those are good starting points because we don't know what we'll find I don't want to be I don't want it to be assumed that that's we're going to be square away with that and I'm like okay moving on to the next thing this is
076over so I think those are good starting points and depending on what we see we may have other questions we may have other I don't know I just don't know what the information looks like so I think that's a good starting point for us to get that info one other thing I'll add is you know I think watching a lot of school sports and other boards and councils um there's so many uh opportunities our only opportunity to discuss things as a group is here right and so um I I see just like quickly getting through agenda items I think this is right here is doing some work because we're having conversations about something and that's something we can't do off of out of this setting and so I think also sometimes when folks have ideas
077they're not going to be able to necessarily really hone in on ideas or get um the unknown unknowns if they're just kind of existing in a vacuum or an echo chamber and so I think having these conversations is very important so that we can all kind of um hopefully to some sort of consensus about what we can get done so I just want to put that out there thank you all right moving over to have a quick oh I'm sorry go ahead plated um something to keep in mind too is like like when onboarding a new person like kind of going back to having discussions like maybe when that information is presented to the incoming person putting it in a forum where it's like a study session or something like that where we could also
078get it too I think you know we've been on the board for two years you've gone longer you just started so I think it almost could become an opportunity for everybody to have that information and make sure everyone's on the same page I think a good idea for that yeah I think that's I mean I won't discuss it further but yes good point we're on it um moving on to the next um agenda item which is the curriculum audit I would like to know when our last curriculum audit was um and who did the curriculum audit last time and how much that was I don't think there's been a curriculum audit it's not a standard practice typically we follow curriculum adoption protocol and the process of community input and then budget capacity for which grade
079levels are affected by the adoption and then after input follow up with whoever's selected through the procurement process make sure that it's aligned with the strategic planning agenda and then it's um budgeted and then it's the professional development the concerns I heard originally seem to be and I may be wrong so I want to get the essence of what we're after here is is as we think about investigation and I don't know if that means Personnel or just overall effectiveness but could it be that an outside agent comes in and surveys staff on their professional development feeling like they had adequate time to process the new curriculum or was it too much too fast or did they feel that it was ineffectively delivered because there's a design and a delivery to curriculum um I don't
080mean to Babylon in curricular ease but uh I'm trying to think what are we looking for here because the curriculum management audit is kind of a hybrid of management practices and then this the original concerns that I heard were staff members who were saying I didn't this is going too fast I didn't get the training I needed it was it it wasn't thorough enough and it doesn't really meet my needs or something if that's how I heard the first round of of awareness and concern well I think like like with those concerns like a curriculum audit isn't going to address those pieces and I think a really good starting point for that is simply just serving our staff and we have um like Dr dupin is that something what it is that something maybe that
081could come out of Hanover or something or even like we just surveyed our staff in my district with a Google form um with very specific questions about professional development and we got a sneak peek at some of the initial responses today and it was very eye-opening to see some just you know very specific areas where we thought we did a better job in training and continuous training or differentiate our our PD um and the teachers had really good ideas on what it should look like so I think it can be as simple as that like that would be where I would start with this kind of issue is you know was your survey anonymous um it wasn't but it's not I guess my concern would be is like if you know people were hesitant to
082be as forthcoming or honest about their feelings about something if it's not an anonymous survey I don't know I think with this like and the way that we especially if they voiced their frustration yeah in the past and they feel like they haven't been heard then I feel like they may be less food survey and I think it's all about your approach so part of this was like the really good feedback that we got from them was through the open-ended pieces where they got to suggest so some of it was questions like you know would you like additional professional development on this math curriculum and we asked it for like each type of curriculum we have would you like additional professional development on Equity you know in certain topics like that um but there were
083opportunities for the teachers to say like what you know what's working really well about our professional development what isn't working well where do you feel that you have a lack so those kind of questions they were even without being anonymous and I guess you could do it either way I think for us we didn't because it helped us we're also going to get data from it as far as like if there's one school that feels less supported if there's certain grade levels that feel less supported um you could do that Anonymous and have just the demographic questions so you could tie those pieces but I mean if you asked to like teachers want the opportunity to say like my needs aren't being met um I think what's really important though is if we do a
084survey like this then the curriculum Department takes that to heart because I've also seen our you know my staff he surveyed before and and nobody looked at the feedback so I'm feeling I'm feeling better about this but I think that would be a place to start for these kinds of complaints how do we currently measure um Effectiveness I know we I know we've adopted as a district a bunch of curriculum in the last um in the last few years even just a few different types of curriculum um I guess I'm curious what how do we measure the effectiveness how do we know and this answers I wrote These down before you talk how do we know that teachers feel comfortable even if they have had some PD I mean there's nothing worse and I'm preaching
085to the choir about like just getting something shoved down your throat and not feeling supported or not having buy-in into it you know it's then going to really lead into my next question which is how do we know it's being implemented with Fidelity or people are just trying to check a box so that they can get through their day like that's my concern and I would hate for people to be in that position because then you're not happy teaching so when I think one uh another takeaway I just remembered too is um some of the feedback and I don't know if this is the case with ours but um sometimes when we hear teachers say like I want more training on this and we bring the vendors back out well we've had some vendors who
086like part of why they didn't feel great was because the vendor training was not great versus taking a teacher who's really who's here who's really knows that curriculum and having them lead so I would also you know if survey is kind of the starting point for this I would take that into consideration of asking them like do you know do you want it provided by because the vendors like don't get me wrong we have some great ones too but they have a very canned like this is for everybody when different districts you know Implement things in different ways and so sometimes they they talk about things that don't apply you know um and things like that so I would also take that into consideration because what we don't want to do is spend more money
087too when we might have in-house experts um and we don't want to be spending money on trainings that still don't give our teachers the support that they need so thank you I'm wondering if a study session regarding our curriculum would be the best bet just because we can bring different voices to the table and actually have a discussion with our teachers and our curriculum Department because it would also be nice who's sitting at a leadership you know administrative level in that department I don't think I know everybody there so by name at least so I'm I'm wondering if you would feel comfortable with that since this is your agenda item as so here's here's my question I guess this was requested two years ago okay it was presented in September 2021 and Dr Lewis you
088said your curriculum management expert that's what you do on the side you understood what I wanted and you said okay we'll do that it's a year and a half later it's never come back to us never discussed again this is why I want to go outside it's not happening it's not happening and I don't see it happening in the next two three months you know that's that's my concern okay it's lower on but it's I would say number three on my priorities but I think it is important and I think it directly relates to our student achievement the fact that our we do not have all of our teachers using wonders we hear that complaint all the time um you know I don't know how math is going that's fairly new but you know I
089have heard that you know they may not be here anymore but principal saying go you go get teach a teacher or whatever which you have to pay for whatever that's called go online and find something off teach a teacher you know that's what that's what we're using to teach our kids those who don't want to use one for whatever reason so um yeah I mean these all sound like great ideas it's just not happening no great can I ask what the purp like what do you want from do you want like what teachers are feeling about using the curriculum because I totally understand that because we had a curriculum a few years ago that I like never used because it was it was bad and I did my own thing but is that what you
090want to see like if wonders is not like is not working or people aren't using that like you want to know like from the teacher's perspective or the leader's perspective like do we need a new curriculum or what do we need to support why is it that we're not using wonders I mean that's I hear that complaint constantly I mean I can tell you as a teacher we're probably not using it because I mean personally for me I just like it it I haven't used wonders but I've used one similar to that and they they usually don't emulate anything that that looks like the test or anything that um Garner's like deep discussions which is kind of like our practice like now right it's not like surface so I guess I'm just wondering like the
091best way to go about this is is it doing the surveys um because I'm not sure that that an audit like this is going to tell us that I think it's more listening to our people and how they feel about it and letting them tell us why they don't like it okay I just wonder why for two years we have done nothing when I requested it this I'm just getting tired of it yeah I I'm not I'm not saying anything I'm just trying to understand like what we want and how we can solve it [Music] um if so I have a question I I guess the main concern that I keep hearing from the curriculum is the Wonders so is there a way that we can initiate at least a survey to our teachers and
092figure out how it's working what's going on and actually really get input from our teachers on that specific program because instead of going through a full blown out curriculum if that's one of the first things that we can tackle first and really get a look a glance at that maybe that's how we can start this but actually um if we agree this and weary we give the um advice of doing this I actually want this to be pushed through and done not just that it's going to get done so yeah studiesync is the Middle School Ela curriculum wonders is the K5 Eli okay so study scene so maybe just on a survey about the ELA curriculum in general which is getting to the point of a natural like you know like seven years we're getting
093to that point where we need to start getting input because in a few years we're going to be looking at do we continue or do we yeah look at something else so our middle schoolers should definitely be reading an entire book and not just excerpts from a book and having deep discussions and inquiry into the book themes all the things that go into obviously we all know so I I just it's concerning that we could be promoting kids who've never actually read an entire novel that's terrifying unfortunately most Middle School Ela curriculum like that's what they are in that conversation like I'm having to like would we rather buy novels for our kids and spend a quarter on a novel you know and I think that's a bigger like just ask the teachers you know
094well and that was the concern I had when we like either adopted it or very early on we were hearing those complaints and I was promised of course they're going to read novels and maybe in some classes they do I'm I would imagine but if that's not a district-wide thing that they have access to um I mean yeah that's I it's so I just okay yeah I I understand so I from what I'm hearing and I just want to make sure that this is okay because I don't want any of us up here ever feeling like our voices aren't being heard for one two three years so if we started off with um a survey on our Ela curriculum would that would you be would that make you feel comfortable as a beginning start yes
095and I think the idea of it being possibly Anonymous would be helpful too I mean I think we could have an option in there would you like your principal or whomever is the appropriate person to contact you for follow-up or some more support you know give them that option to share their name but if people are afraid because I hear that too like I don't I'm not going to speak up because it'll affect my evaluation okay so if we can have some kind of a Ela survey and have an anonymous option so we can really hear the voices of the district on what's working what's not and hey it might be a blessing in disguise and we might find a great awesome curriculum that we need to change forward to anyways so I I think
096that's a good start for that if we could also maybe see the survey oh yeah of course I mean once it's done and completed if yeah if we can all like this all the survey questions okay yeah yeah right and I think this is the the timing of this is really important because this obviously takes time and we do have a new leader coming on I do not want to wait until July to say let's do a survey oh sorry we gotta wait until August now well now school's starting we gotta wait you know right it's we we have work to do this board you know now yes I I agree especially because it's been an agenda item for so long so I think that it is um somewhat of a priority um any further
097discussion on that one okay so the last one comes to our special education audit and um yeah that one I don't know how I guess the the first advice that I would give is um I know that the audit that has been done is not gonna you know the stuff that I think the concerns that we're hearing and that you have it's not going to bring it up because you know that audit has it's very simple and it's more like policy and procedures I feel like a lot of that stuff is more internally so I'm not I don't know if a study session regarding this education department and having the education department present so we can actually ask direct questions I'm not sure what the best solution to that would be um so maybe we
098can direct Dr Lewis to maybe see if you've hear of any other districts that have done uh audit not an audit but like some kind of internal investigation or other people's that do internal investigations on those kind of procedures versus more our versus are we federally meeting the requirements because I don't think that's what the question is that I so I have talked to other school board members about this and I have three School Board colleagues that are ready to give me vendors to conduct an investigation if that's something that we're um you know interested in doing so and I think our procurement you know working with them obviously you know to do that would you be able to give the names of those three districts so Dr Lewis can touch base with that school
099district on how the procedures are what it is that they exactly did and those districts what districts are they do you know so it's not just oh okay I see I see um and I'd rather again I rather work directly with procurement because I want this to be um this one's especially reported right to the board okay because it's a very small town um I don't want to use the same people we've used in the past um or acquaintances and Friends of Dr Lewis um that they get mixed into the otherwise it gets it gets um monkey okay let's do this how about you give that information that you have to um Dr Lewis and then I would like for you Dr Lewis to find out from each of those people what services they actually
100would provide and if we can have like they report to me I mean she would tell them that's what I mean I'm not gonna say hey they're not my employees so I don't want to sound demanding like it needs to come from Super um Dr Lewis so you have three vendors that you think that would be good to look at for an investigation and one is you know of out of state it's in yeah so a cube colleague so and then for those three specifically you can just get a rundown of what that vendor exactly would do and maybe give that information to us so we have a better sense and I just want to make sure that if those services will meet what you're looking for and if we think that that's the step
101that we would go then we can go into further discussion of that but just so we can get a little bit they're likely to ask me for the scope of work so they understand the size of the job and I would want some clarity on that as well okay so you can maybe follow up okay great thank you any other questions or comments which I'll add to mine is you know I'm not an employment lawyer but from the conversations I've had I'm very concerned moving forward into our future um the risk that we have right now and our exposure to employment lawsuits given some of the information that I've had shared with me with people who have nothing else to lose or gain from telling me this because they don't work here anymore and so
102I'm very concerned about the risk that we have given issues with Personnel not just maybe not just in Special Ed but in other areas as well and I think we need to do our best to figure out before we have a really big problem on our hands what's going on agreed I got lost on the point um sorry so it goes along with the fact that this isn't really an audit which is what I was explaining earlier it's like an investigation and it's a Personnel investigation I mean everything is Personnel if you really think about it people's actions and not I mean there's a whole bunch this is like an intertwined issue thing so I think part of it I would want legal advice for that no I totally got it I'm just giving my
103opinion right now I'm not saying that I I just preface that I'm not an employment lawyer I am telling you what I've heard and as a general lawyer it sounds risky and scary and exposure risky to the district yes I mean if if consistently things are happening and it's like the same thing issues consistent issues over and over again that I keep hearing I think we're on a road to like we're bound to eventually Hit the Target and somebody's gonna sue us so like it's important that I get the content of those consistent concerns already the the with legal advice we did the fear of retaliation across the district specifically blackballing I mean that's a legal matter um there are accusations happening push out of both staff and students we've shared this I have been
104sharing this and sharing this and I get it the lead advice I get it it's my understanding that we can't base a lot of decisions on anecdotes I understand that my concern is when things are consistent from people who have nothing to gain from telling this information to me they're not going to make any money off of it they're not asking for their job back it's concerning when there's consistent information the problem with that information problem with your retaliation is there's a fear of retaliation they don't want their names being shared so that is a problem you know it's a conundrum but it is yeah but hopefully with taking these steps um I'm hoping we can help mitigate some of those and I know it's it's rough but we're gonna take the necessary steps to
105make sure that our employees are feeling 100 valued and not just thrown around as some objects that need to get the job done so thank you for bringing up all these audits I really appreciate it because it is something that we need to do any further comments okay um that brings us to our legislative political report um I'm just going to touch on one specific [Music] um sorry and I'm looking at my phone because I have my notes down on my phone it is HB 2800 um basically what HB 2800 will do is give teachers a ten thousand dollar raise over two years while simultaneously giving them more work and leaving less money for other essential staff at the district to help them do their jobs um what HB 2800 also does is that ten
106thousand dollar raise over the two years the district would be left to cover the 50 cost of that budget increase coming from who knows where you know so the legislator once again is making decisions and putting the burden of the district to come up with these fabulous ideas with no money no budget and leaving it as to basically figure it out it did pass the house it's going down to the Senate the only good thing that we do have is that we actually have a governor that probably would be against this but I would like to direct superintendent as well to write a letter how we oppose this because it leaves the district fending out for our own money and I can give you the information and if we can just send a letter to
107um okay um already I don't know that a letter won't be anything I know but his son's a president that the governing board that's basically I mean the district yeah I mean alignment of sending out um we could do yours and the board if that's okay I think it really sends a president I I believe again I'm going to say this again this is House Bill 2800 yes okay it's coming up tomorrow oh okay sending it to the governor's office when the decision is made we want to do it later with the governor I think we can work on it now so that way because I'm pretty sure it's going to pass in it so if it passes Senate to make sure that we have a letter addressed to the governor um throw iron in
108there too is it 23.55 was a bill that got thrown into 2800 as part of the mitigation and it was a very split biparty line so we've got an interesting 29 30 vote going on 29-30 vote going on by party line when in fact there's disagreement in the discussion so they're Amy I know you've talked with one of our folks um about that so we we've got some it's layered is is what the lobbyists that are working on it right now are saying is they're trying to split out 23.55 with 2 800. so that there's and nobody's putting funding on the table so maybe the simple message is fund it past 2025. the other bill is yeah there's oh I just want us to make sure because like I said before intersectionality is important these
109legislators make decisions over school districts without having zero competency of what it is to run a budget on this school at the school district letter uh level so I think it's important that we as a district especially if the board is aligned that we're sending these letters to Governors to our legislators so they know that they can't just come over here and make decisions for us when they're already defunding a public education as it is well because it's so close it really matters if you phone call like I know Amy you've been in contact with one in particular and a fence sitter in a way ready to be yeah he's not yeah um um what's being said is that I would never vote no on a teacher raise and I can understand that sentiment yeah
110um but that's what's being used so that's going to be the pressure on Governor Hobbs why would you veto a teacher raise for people who don't understand what's happening so I think it is important that school boards do um are vocal about why and since we're on the topic in this particular legislative conversation Mr Mann and I were talking about the costs for the district past 2025 somewhere in the neighborhood of 750 000. the past 2025 the the entire burden is on the district the way the bill is currently written but even for the first two years it would be somewhere between like I guess the first year if it's half it would be like 375 the second year would be 750. we apparently do math differently than the legislature because if you look at
111the bill and I know there's new math textbooks we just did an adoption but when I went to school if to do a five thousand dollar raise for you know it's like a word problem if they do a five thousand dollar raise for teachers costs four hundred thousand dollars then to do a ten thousand or sorry if four hundred thousand dollars than to do a ten thousand dollar raise would cost eight hundred thousand but they show it as seven hundred thousand it's probably in the millions in the budget but the example is still true it's like not quite double which is also confusing how do you double the amount the second year and yet they're not procuring double the dollar amounts I think I think that they're yeah and I agree and I think that
112the reasoning that any person is giving um like that especially someone who's been to medical school that can't give a nuanced explanation is a little weird given that the Educators in the Senate and the house have all come out against this bill the people that actually have been in the classroom or currently are and so someone who is presumably as intelligent as that should not have that basic of an explanation for why they're voting for somebody well I think it's I mean like you said like it's the rhetoric it's the misinformation and that's going to be the pressure and and you know with that like I think I would be in favor of us sending something on behalf of us and and being very clear like we of course would love for teachers to get
113raises it's called a 20 by 20 by 20 like it happened in 2018. the state needs to fund it as well and by putting something in place like this that sounds great teacher raises well not if it results in teacher riffs because the district can only afford to pay so much without additional funding yeah and that's the only reason why I brought it up because I think it's important that our school districts start having visibility with them when especially when it's going to impact us in a negative way and this is definitely going to impact us in a negative way so we need to make sure that where I and I know it's tedious and I know sometimes you say that it it doesn't make a difference but I think it it does because it's
114showing our community that you know we're advocating on the best interest of our district 2 not only here locally but at a state level federally or whatever the case is so and you're not testifying to the legislators right now you're speaking to whoever I know their name but whoever is Governor Hobbs is uh advisor for this right so that's who you're talking to that's who's going to make these decisions on these bills it's a and I don't want to be like pessimist but it's a lost cause to think that Folks at the committee level or on the floor are going to change their mind differently it's all for Katie cops yeah so it's it's just important for us to have a presence and that she knows that districts and the more districts that are unified
115in this I think it's a great way for not only current and School District to lead the way in that but to jump for other districts to jump on board to and make a clear statement that this is crap there's a magnified impact because we're all declining districts so that means our budgets are dwindling as this additional pressure to pay the unfunded portion is coming upon us if we were in the Far West Valley where you're growing and so your your budget's increasing every year they they have the resources so there's it's not just that it's an unfunded mandate it's an unfunded mandate with a disproportional impact on the districts in the central core of Phoenix which are the districts who are already disproportionately impacted by all of this correct perpetuating the same systemic issues
116that we are asked selling Mr Mann mentioned too is like if we can like when you're talking with superintendents and the other Phoenix Union feeders if we can get some alignment from their boards as well so that we are more unified because I think that will help remove that pressure from hubs and surrounding people if they know like you're not going to get the districts aren't going to come back and like be mad at you for vetoing this yes okay any further discussion on that one specific thing do we have any other political legislative reports yeah I have a couple from the day that I spent at the Capitol um just point out a couple so SB 1001 which is um forcing Educators to use the wrong pronouns when addressing trans use [Music] it won't
117allow teacher if a child said I identify and want you to call me a he the teacher wouldn't be allowed to this would not be allowed oh yeah yep thank you um the other one I wanted to talk about was SB 1331 which it Blocks school boards from limiting guns on campus which um I will never agree with guns on campus um and then uh the other ones which are for public education that we should be supporting um is SB 1576 and SB 1708 which talks about repealing the universal vouchers and then increasing accountability for those vouchers and then HB 2661 along the same line that it increases accountability for charter school which I think is what everyone really does want if you're going to take public money then you should be held accountable for
118it just like we are here can you repeat those pieces thank you so much for that update any other political updates legislative updates all right awesome and that brings us to Future agenda items does anybody have something to put on the future agenda I want to talk about coming up with an employee handbook for all staff and then the second one that I want to talk about is I would really love to see the district-wide behavior plan committee move up and have it um I would prefer that it start almost immediately I know we're in the middle of testing but um we're looking at a couple months away from starting school again and I think that needs to be in place before school starts agreed on previously no it was just put on as a
119future gender item any other future agenda items all right thank you so much that brings us to our last item I move the governing board adjourn second all those in favor aye thank you so much to everybody for being with us tonight have a great night